Rachel Lewis, chief operating officer with the Vancouver Whitecaps, in her gastown office in Vancouver on July 10, 2014.Mark van Manen
/ Province

Rachel Lewis, chief operating officer with the Vancouver Whitecaps, in her gastown office in Vancouver on July 10, 2014.Mark van Manen
/ Province

Rachel Lewis is unique in her city — and unique in North America.

The chief operating officer of the Vancouver Whitecaps is the only female top executive among Major League Soccer’s 19 teams and is the only female who is a top-tier executive among Vancouver’s three professional sports teams.

That isn’t entirely fair — the Canucks had a woman depart the club’s senior management team just last week. But still, in the words of one expert, the numbers are skewed. When you include the Lions, there are — not counting team owners — 18 men, one woman and one vacancy in the top echelons of executive management among Vancouver’s three pro teams.

“In my opinion, gender shouldn’t be an issue,” Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi said. “If you can do the job, you can do the job.”

Lewis, about to turn 40, joined the Whitecaps in 2003 as director of event management and stadium development. A Richmond native with a BA from the University of Victoria and an MBA from the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, she was promoted to COO in 2007.

Asked why Lewis is the only female executive in MLS, Lenarduzzi could onlyshrug his shoulders.

“I can’t answer for other clubs,” Lenarduzzi said. “I can only talk about our experience and I think (Lewis) is a great example of someone getting herself involved, doing well and getting promoted.”

Over at the B.C. Lions, which has a four-man executive committee, team president Dennis Skulsky said the Lion’s media guide isn’t necessarily a representative guide in describing the club’s management.

“The B.C. Lions management committee is in charge of managing the whole operation,” he said, and that nine-person committee comprises, along with Skulsky and general manager Wally Buono, three women who are either departmental directors or managers. “So, in fact, it’s a 33-per-cent ratio.

“There are 55 to 60 players on contract, it’s a male sport. The coaches and general manager are generally male. It doesn’t mean the business side has to be and (the Lions’ management structure) doesn’t mirror that.”

Canucks COO Victor De Bonis is overseas on vacation and wasn’t available to comment. But a Canucks spokesman pointed out that of the 28 leadership groups the club has, seven are headed by women directors, and that number has been higher in the recent past.

Back with the Whitecaps, Lewis and her husband, Jeff, have two preschool sons. A lifelong Caps fan, she said she’s occasionally asked how she balances family and work.

“I had this conversation recently with somebody who said men don’t get asked about life balance,” Lewis said. “They don’t get asked how they got to the executive level, it’s just an assumption they can do it. I think women still get asked that because in a lot of these industries we’re still not equally represented.

“But that is not how I think about my day. I don’t think about how I’ll manage the balance compared to a male colleague or why did I get the job over him.

“I think we need to be given the permission to believe it’s OK to do this, that women can succeed at being good mothers, daughters, wives, executives, board members.

“I think the second we give ourselves permission you’re going to see more and more of that happen.”

Lewis doesn’t acknowledge there is a glass ceiling. But others familiar with the business of sports do.

“The glass ceiling exists, unfortunately,” Brent Scrimshaw, president and CEO of the Atlantic Lottery Corp., said. “The brightest and best are not always getting forward in sports organizations.”

Scrimshaw was one of Lewis’s early business mentors. She worked for him when the Lower Mainland had a PGA Tour stop, the Air Canada Championship. “Traditionally, sports is a world dominated by men,” he said. “but we’re seeing that change. There’s no reason why, at all, it should be a bastion of men.”

But it is, as are other traditional businesses, according to Jennifer Berdahl, Montalbano professor of leadership studies, women and diversity, at the Sauder school.

“That number (one woman top executive compared with 18 men for Vancouver’s sports teams) is very skewed,” Berdahl said. “Across different industries in male-dominated sectors, the figure tends to be 15 to 17 per cent. That’s the ceiling and you haven’t seen it change in the last 20 years.”

While it’s true all three of Vancouver’s pro sports teams have a lot of women at the management level just below the top group, Berdahl said that doesn’t change the fact there is a glass ceiling.

“It’s sort of a Mad Men version of the world,” she said. “Men run things and women assist them.”

It’s also a bit of a chicken-egg conundrum. Until girls see women running things, they lack the role models to aspire to that themselves. And if women can be in charge of General Motors, Pepsi, HP and Lockheed Martin, why not at the helm of a sports club?

“It’s our responsibility as women to try to mentor women and show them there is a path in these industries,” Lewis said. “A lot has changed ... a lot more has to change, but I think it’s happening. We have to push the envelope and make it clear there isn’t a glass ceiling.”

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